Timorese Police Chief under pressure. NGO watchdog backgrounds him. Interview with Fundasaun Mahein

8.2 Mb. 8 minutes 45 seconds (stereo)


Head of the PNTL (Timorese National Police), Longhuino Monteiro
has been called on to resign for a series of incidents involving
'missing' weapons over several years. The most recent is the
disappearance of a high powered automatic weapon, with 60 rounds
of ammunition from the car of the head of Police Intelligence
while it was parked outside a brothel. Longuino dismissed this as
'not a problem  - a single weapon is not a threat to public
security'. But this, and other weapons that have gone missing
over the years is, according to the NGO Fundasaun Mahein a flaw
in the PNTL that Monteiro has not addressed.


Fundasaun Mahein (Guardian Foundation) is an NGO that evolved as
a watchdog research organisation concerned with issues of public
security out of the destabilising conflicts of 2006 and 2007,
that involved elements of both the Timorese Police and the the
Timorese Armed Forces, who at times were involved in armed
conflict against each other.